Primary Menu

Lean In and Hear What Holds Women Back

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In was just released last week. Conversation about the book, however—in which she “cut[s] through the layers of ambiguity and bias surrounding the lives and choices of working women,” according to Amazon.com—has been heating up for a while.

Last month on The Leader Board, our own Andrew McIlvaine offered a snapshot of Lean In, in which Sandberg shares her views on what often impedes women from achieving leadership positions within their companies. For example:

We hold ourselves back in ways both big and small, by lacking self-confidence, by not raising our hands, and by pulling back when we should be leaning in. [The result is that] men still run the world.”

Sandberg’s perspective is certainly not shared by everyone, as McIlvaine pointed out, referencing a New York Times article in which business consultant Avivah Wittenberg-Cox opined that Sandberg “does what too many successful women before her have done: blaming other women for not trying hard enough.”

The Times also references Princeton professor, former State Department official and Sandberg’s “chief critic,” Anne-Marie Slaughter, noting her claim that Sandberg—and feminism, for that matter—has been guilty of holding women to unrealistic professional and personal standards.

So, it’s safe to say that Sandberg has her detractors. But she may also have a point, according to an online poll being conducted by The Economist.

The still-open survey (you can vote here if so inclined) asks readers if they think that women derail their own careers. The answer? Yes, at least according to 64 percent of the 9,564 voters who have participated in the poll since it opened on March 15.

Interesting. This is a thorny subject, and a complex argument, to be sure. But it seems Sandberg is far from alone in the views she puts forward in Lean In, and she has started a dialogue that may only be heating up. In fact, if you want to feel some of that heat, take a look at the six-plus pages of comments on The Economist’s poll page and watch the opinions fly.